Now, Omarosa and Lara Trump go at it over a tape

It’s sure looking like that fired White House aide with the impossible name was planning her betrayal by book over a very long time.

Omarosa Manigault Newman continues to release conversations she secretly recorded with White House and Trump campaign personnel. Thursday on MSNBC she played a tape recording of Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law offering to pay her $15,000 a month on the 2020 campaign.

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Obviously, this tape-dribbling is part of the publicity tour to drive sales of her ‘Unhinged’ book. Thursday we wrote here about negative reactions to the new book among minorities and book reviewers.

It’s a classic political ploy to maximize a tape’s impact. Each new tape reaches new viewers and reinforces a negative impression among others.

It’s what Barack Obama’s opponents did to him in the winter of 2008, releasing one video after another of racist, anti-Semitic and unpatriotic sermons by Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama had praised.

Leaving it with you now to figure out how this sweet job offer to Omarosa is somehow scandalous. She maintains this was to buy her silence. Of course, it would also buy her campaign outreach time and skills, which Trump had valued.

After his election campaigns or an aides’ departure from the White House, President Obama parked numerous people on the staff of his Organizing for America outfit, where they drew salaries from supporter donations until the next campaign or assignment. What work they did, if any, was not disclosed.

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It’s a standard political practice to maintain the availability and loyalty of people likely needed later. The only offense might come from donors who thought their money was helping to finance real community organizing.

On the played tape, which Omarosa said was made days after her December firing, Lara Trump is heard saying:

All the money that we raise and that pays salaries is directly from donors, small-dollar donors for the most part. So I know you, you were making 179 at the White House, and I think we can work something out where we keep you right along those lines.

In a statement from the campaign Thursday Lara Trump called the tape “a fraud” because the job conversations took place by phone over several weeks. She said:

Omarosa was welcomed into our family as a trusted friend and confidant. On the Women for Trump tour, including Omarosa, we formed a sisterhood bond that is unlike any I have experienced in my life.

We toured together, laughed together, and worked really hard towards a common goal. We never would have imagined that one of our own was secretly recording all of our private conversations.

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In the statement Lara Trump also claimed she offered Omarosa the ill-defined campaign job “before we knew anything about the gross violations of ethics and integrity during her White House tenure.”

Trump added:

I am absolutely shocked and saddened by her betrayal and violation on a deeply personal level.

I hope it’s all worth it for you, Omarosa, because some things you just can’t put a price on.

Omarosa maintains she has numerous other tapes that she says will show “corruption,” among other things.

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